2007-01-16T03:24:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

Through a lack of computer know-how, and a former indifference to the joys of internet blogging, you find me 5 days into my journey, without enough time to give a detailed judgement on Paris, and without enough time for an introduction. I start in the Austrian capital.

15.01.07

Vienna is just beautiful. Whilst cosmopolitan, it offers enough breathing space, although the architecture takes the breath away again. Whereas Paris proved just too large in scale, Vienna is easily accessible by foot, and it takes 5 minutes by metro from one end of the city to the other. Our accommodation is an apartment just north of the river, and makes a refreshing change as we are now able to flex our creative culinary muscles, whilst saving money also.

Myself and the gang went to the Leopold museum yesterday, which turned out to be a revelation, and an improvement two fold on the dreary and uninspiring classical artwork that littered the Louvre. Although I do not pretend to know anything about art, I know enough to be able to make the judgement that modern art is proving to be my preference.

(Oh yes, just a quick note in the margins. I suggested on the sleeper train from Paris that the Mancunian candidate would be a worthy satire of the manchurian candidate.)

In the evening, the gang... (Hang on, let me introduce them. Alexander Greenberg, Aka the hugless stone, is an eccentric character who likes nothing better than to argue the finer points of english grammar. Raphael Von Blumenthal, is a bit of a shorty. Sam Baron, a bit of a tally. And myself, Johnson, johnersmonkey, Mr Mark, the disgusting Hippo).

...and myself, after having seen the sights (the visual delights) found ourselves ordering pizzas and 32 shots of apple sours in an italien fast food outlet. After this, we left and entered an Irish bar at happy hour, and indulged in beer for the rest of the evening. At one point, when discussing the seven deadly sins, I suggested that one of them was hunger. Hilarity ensued.

At the metro station, the gang became dispersed, with myself and the berg choosing to head back to the apartment, whereas Sam and Raph chose to wait at the metro station for an eternity. The evening resulted in a minutely heated exchange between GB and Sam, with Greenberg objecting to Sam's intonations that we should have been more considerate and waited longer at the metro station before heading back. Not a very satisfying debate, and one that left the atmosphere ever so slightly soured by the time we enteredd sleep.

travels, ya